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It’s like Fashion Week … for space, as NASA unveils the freshly designed spacesuits its astronauts will be rocking on the moon.
Axiom Space designed the new look, and NASA proudly flaunted it Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX — the sleek new suits were primarily designed for the Artemis lunar missions scheduled for 2025.
The new suit is called Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or AxEMU, and it’s way more flexible than the old bulky suits worn for over 50 years — and they can be worn by men and women. Big diff from the Apollo missions of the ’60s and ’70s.
Fun fact: NASA says the new suits would fit at least 90% of the folks in the U.S.
You’ll recall, NASA initially pulled the plug on the first all-female spacewalk back in 2019 … all because the existing suits couldn’t fit the 2 women heading to space.
Although they eventually did make the spacewalk in October 2019, it was clear the space agency needed a new vision for its spacesuits.
We’ve seen your tweets about spacesuit availability for Friday’s spacewalk. To clarify, we have more than 1 medium size spacesuit torso aboard, but to stay on schedule with @Space_Station upgrades, it’s safer & faster to change spacewalker assignments than reconfigure spacesuits. pic.twitter.com/tPisBHaF2p
— NASA (@NASA) March 26, 2019
@NASA
NASA enlisted Axiom last year to fix the problem, and they sound thrilled with the end result.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says, “Axiom’s next generation spacesuits will not only enable the first woman to walk on the Moon, but they will also open opportunities for more people to explore and conduct science on the Moon than ever before.”
BTW, don’t get used to that black and orange color pattern … Axiom noted that’s just to show off its logo. The final version will likely be all-white to reflect the intense heat astronauts are exposed to in space.